SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION
Form 10-K
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(Mark One)
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ANNUAL REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934 | |
| For the fiscal year ended December 31, 2002 | ||
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TRANSITION REPORT PURSUANT TO SECTION 13 OR 15(d) OF THE SECURITIES EXCHANGE ACT OF 1934 | |
For the transition period from to
Commission file number 000-23993
Broadcom Corporation
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California
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33-0480482 | |
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(State or Other Jurisdiction of Incorporation or Organization) |
(I.R.S. Employer Identification No.) |
Registrants Telephone Number, Including Area Code: (949) 450-8700
Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(b) of the Act: None
Securities registered pursuant to Section 12(g) of the Act: Class A common stock
Indicate by check mark whether the registrant: (1) has filed all reports required to be filed by Section 13 or 15(d) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 during the preceding 12 months (or for such shorter period that the registrant was required to file such reports), and (2) has been subject to such filing requirements for the past 90 days. Yes þ No o
Indicate by a check mark if disclosure of delinquent filers pursuant to Item 405 of Regulation S-K is not contained herein, and will not be contained, to the best of registrants knowledge, in definitive proxy or information statements incorporated by reference in Part III of this Form 10-K or any amendment to this Form 10-K. o
Indicate by a check mark whether the registrant is an accelerated filer (as defined in Exchange Act Rule 12b-2). Yes þ No o
The aggregate market value of the registrants common stock, $0.0001 par value per share, held by non-affiliates of the registrant on June 28, 2002, the last business day of the registrants most recently completed second fiscal quarter, was $3,659,430,625 (based on the closing sales price of the registrants common stock on that date). Shares of the registrants common stock held by each officer and director and each person who owns 5% or more of the outstanding voting power of the registrant have been excluded in that such persons may be deemed to be affiliates. This determination of affiliate status is not a determination for other purposes.
The registrant has two classes of common stock authorized, Class A common stock and Class B common stock. The rights, preferences and privileges of each class of common stock are substantially identical except for voting rights. Each share of Class A common stock entitles its holder to one vote and each share of Class B common stock entitles its holder to ten votes. In addition, holders of Class B common stock are entitled to vote separately on the proposed issuance of additional shares of Class B common stock in certain circumstances. As of March 24, 2003 there were 207,176,374 shares of Class A common stock outstanding and 71,366,363 shares of Class B common stock outstanding.
DOCUMENTS INCORPORATED BY REFERENCE
Part III incorporates by reference certain information from the registrants definitive proxy statement (the Proxy Statement) for the 2003 Annual Meeting of Shareholders to be filed on or before April 30, 2003. Except with respect to information specifically incorporated by reference in this Form 10-K, the Proxy Statement is not deemed to be filed as part hereof.
BROADCOM CORPORATION
ANNUAL REPORT ON FORM 10-K
FOR THE FISCAL YEAR ENDED DECEMBER 31, 2002
TABLE OF CONTENTS
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| PART I | ||||||
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Item 1.
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Business | 1 | ||||
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Item 2.
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Properties | 16 | ||||
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Item 3.
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Legal Proceedings | 17 | ||||
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Item 4.
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Submission of Matters to a Vote of Security Holders | 21 | ||||
| PART II | ||||||
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Item 5.
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Market for Registrants Common Equity and Related Stockholder Matters | 21 | ||||
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Item 6.
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Selected Consolidated Financial Data | 23 | ||||
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Item 7.
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Managements Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations | 24 | ||||
| Risk Factors | 43 | |||||
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Item 7A.
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Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures about Market Risk | 57 | ||||
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Item 8.
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Financial Statements and Supplementary Data | 58 | ||||
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Item 9.
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Changes in and Disagreements with Accountants on Accounting and Financial Disclosure | 58 | ||||
| PART III | ||||||
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Item 10.
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Directors and Executive Officers of the Registrant | 58 | ||||
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Item 11.
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Executive Compensation | 59 | ||||
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Item 12.
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Security Ownership of Certain Beneficial Owners and Management and Related Stockholder Matters | 59 | ||||
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Item 13.
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Certain Relationships and Related Transactions | 59 | ||||
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Item 14.
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Controls and Procedures | 59 | ||||
| PART IV | ||||||
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Item 15.
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Exhibits, Financial Statement Schedules and Reports on Form 8-K | 60 | ||||
Broadcom,® the pulse logo, Connecting everything,® QAMLink,® StrataSwitch,® V-thernet,® 54g,TM AirForce,TM BroadVoice,TM CALISTO,TM Champion,TM CryptoNetX,TM Digi-F,TM Grand Champion,TM MetroSwitch,TM PhonexChange,TM ROBOswitch,TM ServerWorks,TM SiByte,TM StrataXGS TM and SystemI/O TM are trademarks of Broadcom Corporation and/or its affiliates in the United States and certain other countries. All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.
©2003 Broadcom Corporation. All rights reserved.
CAUTIONARY STATEMENT
All statements included or incorporated by reference in this Report, other than statements or characterizations of historical fact, are forward-looking statements. Examples of forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements concerning projected revenue, expenses, gross profit and income, manufacturing capacity, our accounting estimates, assumptions and judgments, the market acceptance and performance of our products, our ability to retain and hire key executives, technical personnel and other employees in the numbers, with the capabilities, and at the compensation levels needed to implement our business and product plans, the competitive nature of and anticipated growth in our markets, our ability to achieve further product integration, the status of evolving technologies and their growth potential, the cost and success of our development projects, the timing of new product introductions, the adoption of future industry standards, our production capacity, our ability to migrate to smaller process geometries, our ability to consummate acquisitions and integrate their operations successfully, the need for additional capital and the success of pending litigation. These forward-looking statements are based on our current expectations, estimates and projections about our industry, managements beliefs, and certain assumptions made by us. Forward-looking statements can often be identified by words such as anticipates, expects, intends, plans, predicts, believes, seeks, estimates, may, will, should, would, could, potential, continue, similar expressions, and variations or negatives of these words. In addition, any statements that refer to expectations, projections or other characterizations of future events or circumstances, including any underlying assumptions, are forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this Report and are based upon the information available to us at this time. Such information is subject to change, and we will not necessarily inform you of such changes. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and are subject to risks, uncertainties and assumptions that are difficult to predict. Therefore, our actual results could differ materially and adversely from those expressed in any forward-looking statements as a result of various factors, some of which are listed under the section Risk Factors at the end of Item 7 of this Report. We undertake no obligation to revise or update publicly any forward-looking statement for any reason.
All share numbers and per share amounts in this Report have been retroactively adjusted to reflect our 2-for-1 stock splits, each in the form of a 100% stock dividend, effective February 17, 1999 and February 11, 2000.
PART I
| Item 1. | Business |
Overview
Broadcom Corporation is the leading provider of highly integrated silicon solutions that enable broadband communications and networking of voice, video and data services. Using proprietary technologies and advanced design methodologies, Broadcom designs, develops and supplies complete system-on-a-chip solutions and related hardware and software applications for every major broadband communications market. Our diverse product portfolio includes solutions for digital cable and satellite set-top boxes; cable and DSL modems and residential gateways; high-speed transmission and switching for local, metropolitan, wide area and storage networking; home and wireless networking; cellular and terrestrial wireless communications; Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) gateway and telephony systems; broadband network processors; and SystemI/OTM server solutions.
Broadcom was incorporated in California in August 1991. Our principal executive offices are located at 16215 Alton Parkway, Irvine, California 92618-3616, and our telephone number at that location is (949) 450-8700. Our Internet address is www.broadcom.com. Our annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K, amendments to those reports and other Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, filings are available free of charge through our website as soon as reasonably practicable after such reports are electronically filed with, or furnished to, the SEC. Our Class A common stock trades on the Nasdaq National Market® under the symbol BRCM.
Industry Environment and Our Business
Over the past two decades communications technology has evolved from simple analog voice signals transmitted over networks of copper telephone lines to complex analog and digital voice and data signals transmitted over hybrid networks of media, such as copper, coaxial and fiber optic cables and wireless transmission over radio frequencies. This evolution has been driven by enormous increases in the number of users
This evolution has inspired equipment manufacturers and service providers to develop and expand existing broadband communications markets and has created the need for new generations of integrated circuits. Broadband transmission of digital information over existing infrastructures requires highly integrated mixed-signal semiconductor solutions to perform critical systems functions such as complex signal processing and converting digital data to and from analog signals. Broadband communications equipment requires substantially higher levels of system performance, in terms of both speed and precision, which typically cannot be adequately addressed by traditional semiconductor solutions developed for low speed transmission applications. Moreover, solutions that are based on multiple discrete analog and digital chips generally cannot achieve the cost-effectiveness, performance and reliability required by todays broadband marketplace. These requirements are best addressed by new generations of highly integrated mixed-signal devices that combine complex analog and digital functions with high performance circuitry and can be manufactured in high volumes using cost-effective process technologies.
Target Markets and Broadcom® Products
We design, develop and supply a diverse portfolio of products targeted to every significant broadband communications market. Our core markets include the markets for cable modems, digital cable set-top boxes, high-speed transmission and switching products for enterprise networking equipment, and server, storage and workstation platforms. In addition, we have invested significant time and resources developing or acquiring products for emerging and other established broadband communications markets such as direct broadcast satellite set-top boxes, DSL modems and residential gateways, home and wireless networking, cellular and terrestrial wireless communications, metropolitan, wide area and storage networking, and broadband processors.
The following is a brief description of each of our target markets and the silicon solutions that we provide for each market.
| Cable Modems |
Cable modems provide users high-speed Internet access through a cable television network. Although cable network systems were originally established to deliver broadcast television signals to subscribers homes, cable television operators have been upgrading their systems to hybrid fiber coaxial cable to support two-way communications, high-speed Internet access and telecommuting through the use of cable modems. These modems are designed to achieve downstream transmission speeds of up to 43 megabits per second, or Mbps (North American standard), or 56 Mbps (international standard), and upstream transmission to the network at speeds of up to 30 Mbps, nearly 1,000 times faster than the fastest analog telephone modems, which transmit downstream at up to 56 kilobits per second, or Kbps, and upstream at up to 28.8 Kbps. Cable modems typically connect to PCs through a standard 10BASE-T Ethernet card or Universal Serial Bus connection. A device called a cable modem termination system, or CMTS, located at a local cable operators network hub, communicates through television channels to cable modems in subscribers homes and controls access to cable modems on the network.
The cable industrys adoption of an open standard, the Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification, commonly known as DOCSIS,® has made possible interoperability between different manufacturers cable modems and CMTS equipment across different cable networks. The first specification, DOCSIS 1.0, was adopted in 1997 and enabled the cost-effective deployment of cable modems via retail channels. In 1998 the DOCSIS 1.1 specification was announced. The new specification enhanced DOCSIS 1.0 to include support for cable telephony using VoIP technology, streaming video and managed data services. In December 2002 DOCSIS 2.0 was approved. DOCSIS 2.0 adds support for higher upstream transmission speeds of up to 30 Mbps and more symmetric Internet Protocol, or IP, services and provides extra capacity for cable telephony.
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The high speeds of todays cable modems can enable an entirely new generation of multimedia-rich content over the Internet and allow cable operators to expand their traditional video product offerings to include data and telephone services. The adoption of cable modem services and the continued proliferation of homes with multiple PCs have also generated the need for residential networking. Cable television operators have recognized the opportunity to include this feature in the equipment they utilize for cable modem services through either home phoneline or wireless solutions.
We offer integrated silicon solutions for cable modems and cable modem termination systems. We currently have a leading market position in both equipment areas, with an extensive product offering for the high-speed, two-way transmission and display of digital information for the delivery of voice, video and data services to residential customers over existing hybrid fiber coaxial cable. We offer a complete system level solution that not only includes integrated circuits, but also reference design hardware and a full software suite to support our customers needs and accelerate time to market.
Cable Modem Solutions. All of our cable modem chips are built around our QAMLink® DOCSIS-compliant transceiver and media access controller, or MAC, technologies, which enable downstream data rates up to 56 Mbps and upstream data rates up to 30 Mbps and are compliant with DOCSIS versions 1.0, 1.1 and 2.0. These devices provide real-time DOCSIS component capabilities in silicon, enabling quality of service to support constant bit rate services like VoIP and video streaming.
Residential Broadband Gateway Solutions. The level of integration and performance that we continue to accomplish in our cable modem chips is reducing the cost and size of cable modems while providing consumers with easy to use features and seamless integration to other transmission media. As a result, cable modem functionality is evolving into a small silicon core that can be incorporated into other consumer devices for broader distribution of IP-based services throughout the home. Broadcom offers residential broadband gateway solutions that bring together a range of capabilities including those for cable modems, digital set-top boxes, home networking, VoIP and Ethernet connectivity. These products allow cable operators worldwide to provide residential broadband gateways capable of delivering four primary lines of digital telephone, IP video, home networking and cable modem Internet services over cable systems, existing phone lines and wireless connections.
CMTS Solutions. We have a complete end-to-end DOCSIS 1.0 and 1.1 compliant cable modem silicon solution for both head-end and subscriber locations. Our CMTS chipset consists of downstream and upstream physical layer devices and a DOCSIS MAC. This cable modem termination system enables the exchange of information to and from the subscriber location, making it a key element in the delivery of broadband access over cable.
| Digital Cable and Direct Broadcast Satellite Set-Top Boxes |
The last decade has seen rapid growth in the quantity and diversity of television programming. Despite ongoing efforts to upgrade the existing cable infrastructure, an inadequate number of channels exists to provide the content demanded by consumers. In an effort to increase the number of channels and provide higher picture quality, cable service providers began offering digital programming in 1996 through the use of new digital cable set-top boxes. These digital cable set-top boxes facilitate high-speed digital communications between a subscribers television and the cable network. Digital cable set-top boxes are currently able to support downstream transmission speeds to the subscriber of up to 43 Mbps (North American standard) or 56 Mbps (international standard), and several hundred MPEG-2 compressed digital television channels.
Direct broadcast satellite, or DBS, is the primary alternative to cable for providing digital television programming. DBS broadcasts video and audio data from satellites directly to digital set-top boxes in the home via dish antennas. Due to the ability of DBS to provide television programming where no cable infrastructure is in place, we believe that the United States market for DBS may eventually be surpassed by the international market where the cable infrastructure is generally less extensive.
The Federal Communications Commission has stated that traditional terrestrial broadcast stations will be required to broadcast in digital format in the future. Currently, the FCC is targeting 2006 for this mandated digital conversion. We believe this conversion to digital broadcasting will also require new digital cable and
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Cable-TV Set-Top Box Solutions. We offer a complete silicon platform for the digital cable-TV set-top box market. These highly integrated chips give manufacturers a broad range of features and capabilities for building standard digital cable-TV boxes for digital video broadcasting, as well as high-end interactive set-top boxes that merge high-speed cable modem functionality with studio-quality graphics, text and video for both standard definition television, or SDTV, and HDTV formats.
Our cable-TV set-top box silicon consists of front-end transceivers with downstream, upstream and MAC functions, single-chip cable modems, advanced 2D/3D video-graphics encoders and decoders, complementary metal oxide semiconductor, or CMOS-based radio frequency television tuners, and digital visual interface chipsets. These cable-TV chips support most industry transmission and television standards, enabling universal interoperability and easy retail channel distribution. Peripheral modules incorporated into front-end devices also provide support for common set-top box peripheral devices, such as infrared remotes and keyboards, LED displays and keypads.
Our chips provide a comprehensive silicon platform for high-end interactive set-top boxes, supporting the simultaneous viewing of television programming with Internet content capability in either HDTV or SDTV format. This capability offers consumers a true interactive environment, allowing them to access Internet content while watching television. By adding on our home networking and VoIP technologies, these set-top boxes can also support the functions of a residential broadband gateway for receiving and distributing digital voice and data services throughout the home over the phone line. In addition, our set-top box silicon solutions incorporate PVR functionality that allows viewers to watch and record multiple programs and enables additional features such as selective viewing, fast forward, fast reverse, skip forward, skip back and slow motion and frame-by-frame viewing.
DBS Solutions. By leveraging our extensive investment and expertise in the cable-TV set-top box market, we have also been able to develop comprehensive DBS solutions, including an advanced, high-definition video graphics subsystem, which drives the audio, video and graphic interfaces in DBS set-top boxes and provides multi-stream control to support PVR capabilities, a CMOS satellite tuner, which allows our customers to provide additional channel offerings, front-end receiver chips for digital broadcast satellite set-top boxes, and a digital visual interface transmitter. In addition, Broadcom offers a complete end-to-end chipset for receiving and displaying HDTV. This chipset provides television and set-top box manufacturers with a high performance vestigial side band receiver and a 2D/3D video-graphics subsystem for SDTV and HDTV displays.
To meet the needs of the growing broadband satellite market, we have also developed a complete satellite system solution that enables DBS providers to cost effectively deploy two-way broadband satellite services, enabling Internet access via satellite. This solution includes an advanced modulation digital satellite receiver, digital satellite tuner/receiver and a high-performance broadband gateway modem, which combines the functionality of a satellite modem, a firewall router and home networking into a single chip.
| Enterprise Networking |
Local area networks, commonly known as LANs, comprise different types of equipment interconnected by copper, fiber or coaxial cables utilizing a common computer networking protocol called Ethernet. Ethernet scales in speed from 10 Mbps to 10 gigabits per second, or Gbps, providing both the bandwidth and scalability required in todays dynamic networking environment. As communications bottlenecks have appeared in corporate LANs, new technologies such as Gigabit Ethernet, a networking standard that supports data transfer rates of up to one Gbps, and the 10 Gigabit Ethernet standard, which supports data transfer rates of up to 10 Gbps, are being employed to replace older technologies such as Fast Ethernet, which supports data transfer rates of up to 100 Mbps, and 10BASE-T Ethernet, which supports data transfer rates of 10 Mbps. As most desktop connections have migrated to Fast Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet are emerging as the predominant technology for servers and backbone infrastructures that support LANs. We have already begun to see the migration of Gigabit Ethernet to the desktop itself.
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As Gigabit Ethernet is deployed to the desktop, we expect server and backbone connections to continue to migrate to the new 10 Gigabit Ethernet standard. We further expect the continued use of switch connections in place of legacy repeater connections. Switches not only have the ability to provide dedicated bandwidth to each connection, but also provide routing functionality and possess the intelligence to deal with differentiated traffic such as voice, video and data. We anticipate that a significant portion of the installed base of 10/100BASE-T Ethernet switches as well as network interface cards, or NICs, will be upgraded to faster technologies.
Our 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet transceivers, controllers and switches are integrated, low-power silicon solutions that enable the high-speed transmission of voice, video and data services over the Category 5 unshielded twisted-pair copper wiring widely deployed in enterprise and small office networks. We also offer 10 Gigabit Ethernet transceivers for network infrastructure products. These high-speed connections are enabling users to share Internet access, exchange graphics and video presentations, receive VoIP services and share peripheral equipment, such as printers and scanners. We also incorporate intelligent networking functionality into our devices, enabling system vendors to deploy enhanced classes of services and applications, typically found only in the core of the network, to every corporate desktop.
Digital Signal Processing Communication Architecture. Our complex Ethernet transceivers are built upon a proprietary digital signal processing, or DSP, communication architecture optimized for high-speed enterprise network connections. Our Digi-F TM DSP silicon core enables interoperability and robust performance over a wide range of cable lengths and operating conditions, and delivers performance of greater than 250 billion operations per second. This proprietary DSP architecture facilitates the migration path to smaller process geometries and minimizes the development schedule and cost of our transceivers. It has been successfully implemented in .5, .35, .25, .18 and .13 micron CMOS processes, and in chips with one, four, six and eight ports.
Fast Ethernet and Gigabit Ethernet Transceivers. Our 10/100 Ethernet transceiver product line ranges from single-chip 10/100 Ethernet transceivers to single-chip octal 10/100 Ethernet transceivers. These devices allow information to travel over standard Category 5 cable at rates of 10 Mbps and 100 Mbps. Our Gigabit Ethernet transceivers are enabling manufacturers to make equipment that delivers data at Gigabit speeds (1000 Mbps) over Category 5 cabling. We believe this equipment can significantly upgrade the performance of existing networks without the need to rewire the network infrastructure with fiber or enhanced copper cabling. Additionally, we have developed a family of silicon solutions incorporating four transceivers on a single chip optimized for high-port density Gigabit Ethernet switches and routers. These quad transceivers greatly reduce system costs by simplifying typical high-density board designs, further facilitating the deployment of Gigabit Ethernet bandwidth to the desktop.
Our Gigabit transceivers are driving the market toward lower power, smaller footprint solutions, making it easier and less expensive to build 10/100/1000 Ethernet NICs, switches, hubs and routers, and to put networking chips directly on computer motherboards in LAN on motherboard, or LOM, configurations. We plan to continue to incorporate additional functionality into all of our transceivers, providing customers with advanced networking features and higher performance capabilities that we believe will make it even easier to bring Gigabit Ethernet to the desktop.
10 Gigabit Ethernet Transceivers. We have developed a family of 10 Gigabit Ethernet CMOS transceivers. When combined with serial 10 Gigabit optics, these devices can simultaneously transmit and receive at 10 Gbps data rates over 50 kilometers of existing single mode optical fiber. A 10 Gigabit Ethernet link over such distances extends the reach of Ethernet into local, regional and metropolitan fiber optic networks. We believe that significant cost, performance and latency advantages can be realized when the Ethernet protocol and other associated quality of service capabilities are available in these network domains. We anticipate that convergence around 10 Gigabit Ethernet will allow massive data flow from remote storage sites across the country over the metropolitan area network, or MAN, and into the corporate LAN, without unnecessary delays, costly buffering for speed mismatches or latency, or breaks in the quality of service protocol.
SerDes Technology and Products. We have developed an extensive library of Serializer/ Deserializer, or SerDes, cores for Ethernet, storage, and telecommunications network infrastructures. The technology is available as stand alone SerDes devices or integrated with our standard and custom products. New generations of SerDes architectures provide advanced on-chip diagnostic intelligence to allow system designers to monitor, test and
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Ethernet Controllers. We offer a family of Gigabit Ethernet MAC chips that support peripheral computer interconnect, or PCI, and PCI-X local bus interfaces for use in NICs and in LAN on motherboard, or LOM implementations. These devices incorporate an integrated Gigabit Ethernet transceiver and are provided with an advanced software suite available for a variety of operating systems.
Ethernet Switches. We offer a broad switch-on-a-chip product line ranging from low-cost, unmanaged and managed, OSI Layer 2 eight-port switch chips to high-end managed, Layer 3 through Layer 7 enterprise class switch chips.
The ROBOswitchTM-plus product family consists of five- and eight-port Layer 2 switch chips supporting five-, eight-, 16- and 24-port 10/100 Ethernet switches. We believe our switch chips make it economical for the remote office/ business office and small office/ home office network markets to have the same high-speed local connectivity as the large corporate office market. Our highly integrated family of switch products combines the switching fabric, MACs, 10/100 Ethernet transceivers, media independent interface and packet buffer memory onto single-chip solutions. These chips give manufacturers multiple switch design options that combine plug and play ease-of-use, scalability, network management features and non-blocking switching performance at optimal price points for the remote office and branch office user.
Our family of high-end StrataSwitch® II products consists of wire-speed, multi-layer chips that combine multi-service provisioning capabilities with switching, routing and traffic classification functionality onto single-chip solutions. Replacing as many as 10 chips, our StrataSwitch II family of chips incorporates 24 Fast Ethernet and two Gigabit Ethernet ports with advanced Layer 3 switching and multi-layer packet classification. These multi-layer switches are capable of receiving, prioritizing and forwarding packets of voice, video and data at high speeds over existing corporate networks. In addition, the StrataSwitch II family enables advanced network management capabilities in the switching infrastructure to track different data flows and monitor or control bandwidth on any one of these flows. This results in a more intelligent use of network resources and enables a whole new set of network service applications that require high bandwidth, reliable data transmission, low latency and advanced quality service features such as streaming video and VoIP.
Our MetroSwitchTM product family is used in networking equipment to link MAN and large corporate centers and reduce bottlenecks in the system. These products integrate 12 Gigabit Ethernet ports and one 10 Gigabit Ethernet port into a single-chip solution.
Our StrataXGSTM product family provides the multi-layer switching capabilities of our StrataSwitch II technology with wire-speed Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet switching performance for enterprise business networks. These devices, in combination with our quad Gigabit Ethernet transceivers, enable system vendors to build 12-, 24- and 48-port multi-layer Gigabit Ethernet stackable switches, supporting systems with up to 384 Gigabit Ethernet ports.
We also offer an integrated carrier-class switch fabric chipset that can scale in bandwidth from 80 Gbps up to 1.2 terabits per second, or Tbps. This fabric is the core building block for transferring voice, video and data among high speed line cards in multi-protocol label switching multi-service switches, core enterprise switches, data center routers and core IP routers. This chipset enables equipment vendors to build a range of reliable systems, with high quality of service at an acceptable cost point, to accelerate the deployment of high-speed IP-based services that require carrier-class service level agreements.
Servers, Storage and Workstations
With the proliferation of data being accessed and sorted by the Internet and corporate intranets, the demand for servers has increased substantially. As integral pieces of the overall communications infrastructure, servers are multiprocessor-based computers that are used to support users PCs over networks and to perform data intensive PC functions such as accessing, maintaining and updating databases. Unlike mobile and desktop PCs, which are dominated by central processing units, or CPUs, server, storage and workstation platforms require highly-tuned core logic to provide high bandwidth, high performance and the reliability, availability and scalability that
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SystemI/O silicon solutions act as the essential conduits for delivering high-bandwidth data in and out of servers, and coordinating all input/ output, or I/O, transactions within server, storage and workstation platforms, including among external I/O devices, the main system memory and the CPUs.
ServerWorks Corporation, our wholly-owned subsidiary, provides core logic technology that manages the flow of data to and from a systems processors, memory and peripheral I/O devices. ServerWorksTM products are used to design low-end servers with one or two CPUs and mid-range servers with two to four CPUs, as well as storage, workstation and networking platforms. The bandwidth of our SystemI/O solutions, both from CPU to memory and memory to I/O subsystems such as disk drives or networks, leads the industry. These products also provide reliability, availability and serviceability features. The current generation of our Grand ChampionTM SystemI/O products, the GC-HE, GC-LE and the GC-SL, supports Intel Pentium® 4 processors that run at speeds beyond 2.4 GHz and provides memory bandwidth of up to five gigabytes per second and I/O bandwidth of up to four gigabytes per second.
In 2002 ServerWorks was the first to integrate Gigabit Ethernet into the core logic for Intel-based servers through its ChampionTM Ethernet I/O Bridge, which can be used with all versions of the Grand Champion System I/O core logic.
To date, ServerWorks chips have been used primarily in servers sold by major PC server OEMs and motherboard manufacturers. The server market is growing rapidly, and ServerWorks has leveraged its technology over the past year into other growing markets such as storage and networking.
Home and Wireless Networking
The proliferation of multi-PC households and Internet appliances increases the need for home networking solutions and lays the foundation for extending the reach of shared broadband Internet access, video transfer and voice at high speeds throughout the home and small office.
Wireless technologies for wireless local area networking, or WLAN, based upon the IEEE 802.11 standards allow enterprises and consumers to have mobile flexibility around their homes and offices. The dominant standard for wireless networks today is the 802.11b specification, which is the wireless equivalent of 10 Mbps Ethernet, allowing transfer speeds up to 11 Mbps and spanning distances of up to 100 meters. 802.11b products are found in the education, consumer, home, small to medium business and enterprise markets. The industry is currently transitioning to WLAN products based on the forthcoming 802.11g and the 802.11a standards. These specifications provide almost five times the speed of existing 802.11b networks.
Our AirForceTM product family consists of the transceiver and wireless network process chipsets and the software that allows PCs and other devices to connect to wireless home or enterprise networks using 802.11b, 802.11g or 802.11a/g dual-band technology. Broadcoms 54gTM technology is an implementation of the 802.11g draft specification that preserves full interoperability with 802.11b but provides connectivity at speeds of up to 54 Mbps.
The BluetoothTM short-range wireless networking standard is a low-cost wire-replacement technology that enables connectivity among a wide variety of mainstream consumer electronic devices including PCs, mobile phones, PDAs, digital cameras and automotive electronics. Bluetooth short-range wireless connectivity enables personal area networking, or PAN, at speeds of up to 721 Kbps, and can cover distances up to 32 feet. In addition, Bluetooth technology allows devices to automatically synchronize and exchange data with other Bluetooth-enabled devices without the need for wires.
Our portfolio of single-chip and radio-only Bluetooth solutions enable manufacturers to add Bluetooth functionality to almost any electronic device with a minimal amount of development time and resources.
Our solutions in these areas offer the industrys highest levels of performance and integration with designs in standard CMOS, allowing them to be highly reliable while dramatically lowering manufacturing costs.
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DSL
Digital subscriber line technologies, commonly known as DSL, represent a family of broadband technologies that use a greater range of frequencies over existing copper telephone lines than traditional telephone services, which in turn allows greater bandwidth to send and receive information. DSL speeds range from 128 Kbps to 52 Mbps depending on the distance between the central office and the subscriber. These data rates enable local exchange carriers to provide, and end users to receive, a wide range of new bundled broadband services.
We offer families of asymmetric DSL, or ADSL, and very-high-speed DSL, or VDSL, chips and chipsets for both customer premises equipment, or CPE, and central office applications. Our DSL technology enables local exchange carriers and enterprise networking vendors to deliver bundled broadband services, such as digital video, high-speed Internet access, video teleconferencing and IP data business services, over existing copper twisted pair wiring.
For ADSL CPE applications, we provide products that address the wide variety of LAN connectivity options, including Ethernet, USB-powered solutions, VoIP-enabled access devices and 802.11 access points with multiple Ethernet ports. These solutions also provide a fully scalable architecture to address emerging value-added services such as in-home voice and video distribution. Wide area network connectivity is provided using integrated, standards-compliant physical layer technology.
ADSL central office applications are addressed with highly integrated silicon solutions. We believe these solutions will enable equipment manufacturers of digital subscriber line access multiplexer, or DSLAM, and next generation digital loop carriers to offer a significant increase in the number of DSL-enabled copper twisted pairs that can be supported within telecommunication companies tight heat, power and space constraints.
For VDSL applications, we offer our V-thernet® product family, which supports Ethernet transport over standard telephone wires.
Metropolitan and Wide Area Networking
To address the increasing volume of data traffic emanating from the growing number of broadband connections in homes and businesses, MANs, and wide area networks, or WANs, will have to evolve at both the transport and switching layers.
We believe that the CMOS fabrication process will be a key technology in this evolution by enabling the development of smaller optical modules and system components that cost less, consume less power and integrate greater functionality.
Electronic components for optical communications are a natural extension of our large portfolio of high-speed LAN chips, one that will allow us to provide end-to-end silicon solutions across the WAN, MAN and LAN that increase the performance, intelligence and cost-effectiveness of broadband communications networks.
We offer a portfolio of CMOS OC-48 and OC-192 transceiver and forward error correction, or FEC, chips for Synchronous Optical Networks, or SONET, and dense wave division multiplexing, or DWDM, applications, as well as a serial CMOS transceiver for 10 Gigabit Ethernet applications. Our use of the CMOS process allows substantially higher levels of integration and lower power consumption than competitive gallium arsenide, bipolar or silicon germanium solutions. Our DWDM Transport Processor combines an OC-192 transceiver, FEC, performance monitoring logic and G.709 digital wrapper into a single CMOS chip solution, occupying less than one half the space and consuming one-third the power of non-integrated solutions.
Custom Silicon Products. Custom silicon products are devices for applications that customers are able to semi-customize by integrating their own intellectual property with our proprietary intellectual property cores. We have successfully deployed such devices into the LAN, WAN, and PC markets. Our typical semi-custom devices are complex mixed-signal designs that leverage our advanced design processes.
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Voice over IP
Voice over IP is stimulating dramatic changes in the traditional public switched and enterprise telephone networks. IP packet-based networks provide significant economic advantages over traditional circuit-switched voice networks. The trend to IP networks for voice has been driven by the significant build-out of the Internet and deregulation of long distance and local phone service.
Within the enterprise, equipment markets are being radically affected by the convergence of circuit switched and IP packet-based technologies. A host of new enterprise services can be enabled when LAN-based Ethernet switching infrastructure is used to carry both data and voice. We provide both silicon and software to enable our equipment customers to provide cost effective solutions in this area.
VoIP Software. VoIP refers to the transmission of telephony voice, fax and analog data over a packet-based network. The delivery of voice, fax and analog data over LANs and WANs with inherently unpredictable routings requires complex DSP technology to preserve voice fidelity, fax reliability and telephone quality of service. Our PhonexChangeTM technology enables VoIP communications over Ethernet, cable and DSL networks. Our BroadVoiceTM vocoder algorithm features a wideband mode that significantly improves the clarity and quality of telephony voice service.
IP Phone Solutions. Our IP phone silicon solutions integrate the essential packet processing, voice processing and switching technologies to provide the quality of service, high fidelity and reliability necessary for enterprise telephony applications. Our products enable manufacturers to develop IP phones that can be powered through the same Category 5 unshielded twisted pair cable used for Ethernet data.
Communications Processors. We offer the CALISTOTM family of single-chip communications processors along with software and development tools for carrier-class voice gateways and access concentrators that connect the traditional public switched telephone network to packet-based networks such as the Internet. This advanced architecture provides increased signal processing throughput in a more efficient silicon implementation. CALISTO supports up to 240 packet telephony channels on a single chip, replacing up to 10 traditional DSP discrete components with a power consumption of less than 10 milliwatts per channel.
Mobile Communications
The cellular chip, design and software markets are transitioning from pure voice to broadband multimedia and data, transforming the traditional cellular phone handset from a voice-only device into a multimedia gateway. Products emerging from this transition will allow end-users to download e-mail, web pages and streaming media to cellular phones, PDAs, laptops and other mobile devices.
The international Global System for Mobile Communication, or GSM, is currently the dominant standard for digital mobile communications. Adopting digital circuit-switched communications technology, GSM enables a variety of network access, voice and data services. An emerging data standard derived from GSM is General Packet Radio Services, or GPRS. GPRS enables packet-based always on Internet applications and is a more efficient data transport mechanism with higher transmission rates for a new generation of data services such as Internet browsing, 3-D gaming and multimedia messaging with rich graphics and audio content.
Through our acquisition of Mobilink Telecom, Inc. in May 2002, we develop, manufacture and market GSM and GPRS chipsets and reference designs with complete software and terminal solutions for use in cellular phones, cellular modem cards and wireless PDAs. Our mobile communications products include baseband processor solutions, which integrate both mixed signal and digital functions on a single chip. We are also currently developing chipsets for the emerging 3G standard based on enhanced GPRS, or EGPRS, that will significantly increase the bandwidth available to the user for mobile data exchange.
Broadband Processors
Broadband processors are high performance devices enabling high-speed computations that help identify, optimize and control the flow of data within the broadband network. The continued growth of IP traffic, coupled with the increasing demand for new and improved services and applications such as security, high-speed access
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We believe a new generation of broadband processors that balance aggressive performance and power requirements with sizing constraints is required to meet the needs of current and next generation server, storage, data networking and wireless applications. These processors must be easily programmable to allow new services and features to be upgraded with minimal customizing efforts.
Leveraging our expertise in high-performance, low-power very large scale integration, or VLSI, design, we have developed a family of high performance, low power processor solutions designed specifically to meet the needs of next-generation networks. Our SiByteTM family of processors delivers four key features essential for todays embedded broadband network processors: very high performance, low power, high integration of network-centric functions, and programmability based on an industry-standard Instruction Set Architecture. At the heart of the SiByte family of processors is the SB-1 core, a MIPS 64-bit superscalar CPU capable of operating at frequencies of 400 MHz up to one GHz. All SiByte processors are based on the industry-standard MIPS64TM architecture, and we believe these processors will enable equipment vendors to immediately leverage the large installed base of tools and software available for the MIPS® architecture, thereby shortening development time and minimizing the need to customize programming.
These processors provide customers with a solution for high-speed network processing, including packet classification, queuing, forwarding and exception processing for wired and wireless networks. They enable complex applications such as deep content switching, routing and load balancing to be performed at wire speed, at line rates between OC-3 and OC-48, which transmits data at 2.5 Gbps. Our devices are also being designed for utilization in the fast growing network storage market, including network attached storage, or NAS, and storage area networking, or SAN. Our general purpose processors are ideal for the complex protocol conversions, virtualization and proxy computations that storage applications require.
Security Processors and Adapters
Most corporations today use the Internet for the transmission of data between corporate offices and remote sites and for a variety of e-commerce and business-to-business applications. To secure corporate networks from intrusive attacks and provide for secure communications among corporate sites and remote users, an increasing amount of networking equipment will include technology to establish virtual private networks, or VPNs, which use the Internet protocol security, or IPSec, protocol. In addition to VPNs, secure socket layer, commonly referred to as SSL, is used to secure sensitive information between users and service providers for e-commerce applications.
Our SSL family of CryptoNetXTM high-speed security processors and adapters for enterprise networks is enabling companies to guard against Internet attacks without compromising the speed and performance of their networks. Our PCI 2.2-compliant adapters provide a range of performance from 800 to 4,000 SSL transactions per second. Our IPsec processors are built upon a proprietary, scalable silicon architecture that performs standards-compliant cryptographic functions at data rates ranging from a few Mbps to multi-Gbps. This architecture is being deployed across all our product lines, addressing the entire broadband security network spectrum from residential applications to enterprise networking equipment. This scalable architecture allows us to develop standalone security products for very high-speed networking applications and to integrate the IP security processor core into lower speed solutions for consumer products, such as cable and DSL modem applications.
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Reference Platforms
We also develop and license reference platforms designed around our integrated circuit products that represent example system-level applications for incorporation into our customers equipment. These reference platforms generally include a fairly extensive suite of software drivers as well a protocol and application layer software to assist our customers in developing their final end products. By providing these reference platforms, we can assist our customers in achieving easier and faster transitions from initial prototype designs through final production releases. These reference platforms enhance the customers confidence that our products will meet their market requirements and product introduction schedules.
Customers and Strategic Relationships
We sell our products to leading manufacturers of broadband communications equipment in each of our target markets. Because we leverage our technologies across different markets, certain of our integrated circuits may be incorporated into equipment used in several different markets.
Customers currently shipping broadband communications equipment incorporating our products include Ambit, Apple, Cisco Systems, Dell, D-Link, Echostar, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Motorola, Nortel Networks, Pace, Pioneer, Scientific-Atlanta, Sony Ericsson, Thomson CE and 3Com, among others. To meet the current and future technical needs in our target markets, we have established strategic relationships with multi-service operators that provide broadband communications services to consumers and businesses.
As part of our business strategy, we periodically establish strategic relationships with certain key customers. In September 1997 we entered into a development, supply and license agreement with General Instrument, now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Motorola, which provided that we would develop and supply chips for General Instruments digital cable set-top boxes. In November 2000 we modified that agreement to amend General Instruments minimum purchase requirements and also entered into a new supply agreement with General Instrument covering our sale of cable modem chips. In January 2002 we modified the new supply agreement to add minimum purchase requirements of chips for digital set-top boxes. In December 2002 we further modified the supply agreement to extend minimum purchase requirements of chips for cable modems.
From time to time, we have entered into development agreements with Cisco Systems, Nortel Networks, Sony Ericsson, 3Com and others. We have worked closely with these customers to co-develop products.
A small number of customers have historically accounted for a substantial portion of our net revenue. Sales to Hewlett-Packard, including sales to its manufacturing subcontractors, represented approximately 14.8% of our net revenue in 2002 and approximately 14.1% of our net revenue in 2001. These percentages include sales to Compaq, which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard in May 2002, for all periods presented. Sales to Motorola, including sales to its manufacturing subcontractors, represented approximately 12.1% of our net revenue in 2002, approximately 18.2% of our net revenue in 2001 and 23.2% of our net revenue in 2000. Sales to Dell, including sales to its manufacturing subcontractors, represented approximately 11.3% of our net revenue in 2002. Sales to 3Com and Cisco Systems, including sales to their manufacturing subcontractors, represented approximately 15.1% and 14.1% of our net revenue in 2000. Sales to our five largest customers were approximately 52.3% of our net revenue in 2002, 54.9% of our net revenue in 2001 and 61.8% of our net revenue in 2000. We expect that our key customers will continue to account for a substantial portion of our net revenue in 2003 and in the foreseeable future. These customers and their respective contributions to our net revenue have varied and will likely continue to vary from period to period. We typically sell products pursuant to purchase orders that customers can generally cancel or defer on short notice without incurring a significant penalty, and currently do not have agreements with any of our key customers that contain long-term commitments to purchase specified volumes of our products.
Core Technologies
Using proprietary technologies and advanced design methodologies, we design, develop and supply complete system-on-a-chip solutions and related hardware and software applications for our target markets. Our proven system-on-a-chip design methodology has enabled us to be first to market with advanced chips that are highly integrated and cost-effective, and that facilitate the easy integration of our customers intellectual property. Our design methodology leverages industry-standard, state-of-the-art electronic design automation tools, and generally
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We believe that one of our key competitive advantages is our broad base of core technologies encompassing the complete design space from systems to silicon. We have developed and continue to build on the following technology foundations:
| | proprietary communications systems algorithms and protocols; | |
| | advanced DSP hardware architectures; | |
| | system-on-a-chip design methodologies and advanced library development for both standard cell and full-custom integrated circuit design; | |
| | high-performance radio frequency, analog and mixed-signal circuit design using industry-standard CMOS processes; | |
| | high-performance custom microprocessor architectures and circuit designs; and | |
| | extensive software reference platforms to enable complete system-level solutions. |
Research and Development
We have assembled a large team of experienced engineers and technologists, many of whom are leaders in their particular field or discipline. As of February 28, 2003 a majority of our 1,761 research and development employees had advanced degrees. Our work force includes approximately 242 employees with Ph.Ds. These key employees are involved in advancing our core technologies, as well as applying them to our product development activities. The system-on-a-chip solutions for many of our target markets benefit from the same underlying core technologies, which enables us to address a wide range of broadband communications markets with a relatively focused investment in research and development.
We believe that the achievement of higher levels of integration and the timely introduction of new products in our target markets is essential to our growth. Our current plans are to maintain our significant research and development staffing levels in 2003. In addition to our principal design facilities in Irvine, California and Santa Clara County, California, we have additional design centers in Tempe, Arizona; Los Angeles and San Diego Counties, California; Duluth, Georgia; Middletown, New Jersey; Dallas, Texas; Seattle, Washington; Vancouver, Canada; Belgium, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, India, Israel, Singapore, Taiwan, and China. We anticipate establishing additional design centers in the United States and other countries in the future.
Our research and development expense was $461.8 million, $446.6 million and $250.7 million in 2002, 2001 and 2000, respectively.
Manufacturing
| Wafer Fabrication |
We manufacture our products using standard CMOS process techniques. The standard nature of these processes permits us to engage independent silicon foundries to fabricate our integrated circuits. By subcontracting our manufacturing requirements, we are able to focus our resources on design and test applications where we believe we have greater competitive advantages. This strategy also eliminates the high cost of owning and operating a semiconductor wafer fabrication facility.
Our operations and quality engineering team closely manages the interface between manufacturing and design engineering. While our design methodology typically creates smaller than average die for a given function, it also generates full-custom integrated circuit designs. As a result, we are responsible for the complete functional and parametric performance testing of our devices, including quality. We employ a fully staffed operations and quality organization similar to that of a vertically integrated semiconductor manufacturer. We also arrange with
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We depend on five independent foundry subcontractors to manufacture substantially all of our products. Our key silicon foundries are Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation in Taiwan, Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing in Singapore, NEC Corporation in Japan and Silterra Malaysia Sdn. Bhd. in Malaysia. Any inability of one of our five independent foundry subcontractors to provide the necessary capacity or output for our products could result in significant production delays and could materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. While we currently believe we have adequate capacity to support our current sales levels, we continue to work with our existing foundries to obtain more production capacity, and we intend to qualify new foundries to provide additional production capacity. It is possible that adequate foundry capacity may not be available on acceptable terms, if at all. In the event a foundry experiences financial difficulties, or if a foundry suffers any damage or destruction to its facilities, or in the event of any other disruption of foundry capacity, we may not be able to qualify alternative manufacturing sources for existing or new products in a timely manner.
Our products are currently fabricated with ..5 micron, triple layer metal; .35 micron, quad layer metal; .22 micron, five layer metal; .18 micron, five and six layer metal; and .13 micron, five and six layer metal, feature sizes. We continuously evaluate the benefits, on a product by product basis, of migrating to smaller geometry process technologies. Although our experience to date with the migration of products to smaller processes geometries has predominantly been favorable, we could experience difficulties in future process migration. Other companies in our industry have experienced difficulty transitioning to new manufacturing processes and, consequently, have suffered reduced yields or delays in product deliveries. We believe that the transition of our products to smaller geometries will be important for us to remain competitive. Our business, financial condition and results of operations could be materially and adversely affected if any such transition is substantially delayed or inefficiently implemented.
| Assembly and Test |
Our wafer probe testing is conducted by either our independent foundries or independent wafer probe test subcontractors. Following completion of the wafer probe tests, the die are assembled into packages and the finished products are tested by one of our six key subcontractors: ASAT Ltd. in Hong Kong, ST Assembly Test Services in Singapore, Siliconware Precision in Taiwan, NEC Corporation in Japan, United Test and Assembly Center in Singapore and Signetics in South Korea. While we have not experienced material disruptions in supply from assembly subcontractors to date, we could experience assembly problems in the future. The availability of assembly and testing services from these subcontractors could be materially and adversely affected in the event a subcontractor experiences financial difficulties, or if a subcontractor suffers any damage or destruction to its facilities, or in the event of any other disruption of assembly and testing capacity.
| Quality Assurance |
Manufacturers of broadband communications equipment demand high quality and reliable semiconductors for incorporation into their products. We focus on product reliability from the initial stage of the design cycle through each specific design process, including layout and production test design. In addition, we subject our designs to in-depth circuit simulation at temperature, voltage and processing extremes before initiating the manufacturing process.
We prequalify each assembly and foundry subcontractor. This prequalification process consists of a series of industry standard environmental product stress tests, as well as an audit and analysis of the subcontractors quality system and manufacturing capability. We also participate in quality and reliability monitoring through each stage of the production cycle by reviewing electrical and parametric data from our wafer foundry and assembly subcontractors. We closely monitor wafer foundry production to ensure consistent overall quality, reliability and yield levels. In cases where we purchase wafers on a fixed cost basis, any improvement in yields can reduce our cost per chip.
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As part of our total quality program, we received ISO 9002 certification, a comprehensive International Standards Organization specified quality system, for our Singapore facility. All of our principal independent foundries and package assembly facilities are currently ISO 9001 certified.
| Product Distribution |
Historically we distributed products to our customers through an operations and distribution center located in Irvine, California. In 1999 we established an international distribution center in Singapore. This facility puts us closer to our suppliers and many key customers and improves our ability to meet customers needs. Our Irvine facility continues to ship products to U.S. destinations, while our Singapore facility distributes products to international destinations. We also ship products of our wholly-owned subsidiary ServerWorks from a Los Angeles distribution facility.
Sales and Marketing
Our sales and marketing strategy is to achieve design wins with technology leaders in each of our targeted broadband communications markets by providing superior sales, field application and engineering support. We market and sell our products in the United States through a direct sales force, distributors and manufacturers representatives. The majority of our sales occurs through our direct sales force, which is based out of our regional and home offices located in California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Virginia. We have engaged independent distributors, Arrow Electronics and Insight Electronics, to service the North American and South American markets.
We dedicate sales managers to principal customers to promote close cooperation and communication. We also provide our customers with reference platform designs for most products. We believe this enables our customers to achieve easier and faster transitions from the initial prototype designs through final production releases. We believe these reference platform designs also significantly enhance our customers confidence that our products will meet their market requirements and product introduction schedules.
We market and sell our products internationally through regional offices located in Canada, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Singapore, Sweden and the United Kingdom, as well as through a network of independent distributors and representatives in Australia, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Taiwan. We select these independent entities based on their ability to provide effective field sales, marketing communications and technical support to our customers. All international sales to date have been denominated in U.S. dollars. For information regarding revenue from independent customers by geographic area, see Note 12 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements, included in Part IV, Item 15 of this Report.
Backlog
Our sales are made primarily pursuant to standard purchase orders for delivery of products. Due to industry practice that allows customers to cancel or change orders with limited advance notice prior to shipment, we do not believe that backlog is a reliable indicator of future revenue levels.
Competition
Broadband communications markets and the semiconductor industry are intensely competitive and are characterized by rapid change, evolving standards, short product life cycles and price erosion. We believe that the principal factors of competition for integrated circuit providers to our target markets include:
| | product quality; | |
| | product capabilities; | |
| | level of integration; | |
| | reliability; |
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| | price; | |
| | time-to-market; | |
| | ability to provide financing; | |
| | market presence; | |
| | standards compliance; | |
| | system cost; | |
| | intellectual property; | |
| | customer support; and | |
| | reputation. |
We believe that we compete favorably with respect to each of these factors.
We compete with a number of major domestic and international suppliers of integrated circuits and related applications in our target broadband communications markets. We also compete with suppliers of system-level and motherboard-level solutions incorporating integrated circuits that are proprietary or sourced from manufacturers other than Broadcom. This competition has resulted and will continue to result in declining average selling prices for our products. In all of our target markets, we also may face competition from newly established competitors and suppliers of products based on new or emerging technologies, and customers who choose to develop their own silicon solutions. We also expect to encounter further consolidation in the markets in which we compete.
Many of our competitors operate their own fabrication facilities and have longer operating histories and presence in key markets, greater name recognition, larger customer bases and significantly greater financial, sales and marketing, manufacturing, distribution, technical and other resources than we do. As a result, these competitors may be able to adapt more quickly to new or emerging technologies and changes in customer requirements or to devote greater resources to the promotion and sale of their products. Current and potential competitors have established or may establish financial or strategic relationships among themselves or with existing or potential customers, resellers or other third parties. Accordingly, it is possible that new competitors or alliances among competitors could emerge and rapidly acquire significant market share. In addition, competitors may develop technologies that more effectively address our markets with products that offer enhanced features, lower power requirements or lower cost. Increased competition could result in pricing pressures, decreased gross margins and loss of market share and may materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.
Intellectual Property
Our success and future revenue growth depend, in part, on our ability to protect our intellectual property. We rely primarily on patent, copyright, trademark and trade secret laws, as well as nondisclosure agreements and other methods, to protect our proprietary technologies and processes. These measures may not provide meaningful protection for our intellectual property. We hold 301 U.S. patents and have filed over 1,600 additional U.S. patent applications. We may not receive any additional patents as a result of these applications or future applications. Even if additional patents are issued, any claims allowed may not be sufficiently broad to protect our technology. In addition, any existing or future patents could be challenged, invalidated or circumvented, and any rights granted under such patents may not provide us with meaningful protection. The failure of any patents to adequately protect our technology would make it easier for our competitors to offer similar products. In connection with our participation in the development of various industry standards, we may be required to license certain of our patents to other parties, including competitors, that develop products based upon the adopted industry standards. We may not have foreign patents or pending applications corresponding to our U.S. patents and applications. Even if foreign patents are granted, effective enforcement in foreign countries may not be available. We also generally enter into confidentiality agreements with our employees and strategic partners, and typically control access to and distribution of our documentation and other proprietary information. Despite
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Companies in the semiconductor industry often aggressively protect and pursue their intellectual property rights. From time to time, we have received, and may continue to receive in the future, notices that claim we have infringed upon, misappropriated or misused other parties proprietary rights. Moreover, in the past we have been engaged and currently we are engaged in litigation with parties who claim that we have infringed their patents or misappropriated or misused their trade secrets. For additional information regarding this litigation, see Item 3 of this Report. Although we are defending the pending litigation vigorously, it is possible that we will not prevail in pending or future lawsuits. In addition, we may be sued by other parties who claim that we have infringed their patents or misappropriated or misused their trade secrets, or who may seek to invalidate one or more of our patents. Any of these claims may materially and adversely affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. For example, in a patent or trade secret action, a court could issue a preliminary or permanent injunction that would require us to withdraw or recall certain products from the market or redesign certain products offered for sale or under development. In addition, we may be liable for damages for past infringement and royalties for future use of the technology. We may also have to indemnify certain customers and strategic partners under our agreements with such parties if a third party alleges or if a court finds that we have infringed upon, misappropriated or misused another partys proprietary rights. Even if claims against us are not valid or successfully asserted, the defense of these claims could result in significant costs and a diversion of management and personnel resources. In any of these events, our business, financial condition and results of operations may be materially and adversely affected. If any claims or actions are asserted against us, we may seek to obtain a license under a third partys intellectual property rights. However, we may not be able to obtain a license on commercially reasonable terms, if at all.
Employees
As of February 28, 2003 we had 2,508 full-time employees and 81 contract and temporary employees, including 1,761 individuals engaged in research and development, 351 engaged in sales and marketing, 186 engaged in manufacturing operations and 291 engaged in finance, legal and general administration activities. Our employees are not represented by any collective bargaining agreement, and we have never experienced a work stoppage. We believe our employee relations are good.
| Item 2. | Properties |
We lease facilities in Irvine (our corporate headquarters) and Santa Clara County, California. Each of these facilities includes administration, sales and marketing, research and development, and operations functions. In addition to our principal design facilities in Irvine and Santa Clara County, California, we lease additional design centers in Tempe, Arizona; Los Angeles and San Diego Counties, California; Duluth, Georgia; Dallas, Texas; Middletown, New Jersey; and Seattle, Washington.
Internationally, we lease a distribution center that includes engineering design and administrative facilities in Singapore. We also lease engineering design and administrative facilities in Belgium, Canada, China, India, Israel, the Netherlands, Taiwan and the United Kingdom.
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In addition, we lease various sales and marketing facilities in the United States and several other countries.
The foregoing leases comprise an aggregate of approximately 1.0 million square feet. Our principal facilities have lease terms expiring between 2005 and 2012. We believe that our current facilities will be adequate for at least the next 12 months.
For additional information regarding our obligations under property leases, see Note 7 of Notes to Consolidated Financial Statements, included in Part IV, Item 15 of this Report.
| Item 3. | Legal Proceedings |
Intellectual Property Litigation. In August 2000 Intel Corporation filed a complaint against us in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware asserting that we (i) infringe five Intel patents relating to video compression, high-speed networking and semiconductor packaging, (ii) induce the infringement of such patents, and (iii) contributorily infringe such patents. The complaint sought a preliminary and permanent injunction against us as well as the recovery of monetary damages, including treble damages for willful infringement. In the first phase of the trial, which concluded in December 2001 and involved two of the five patents in the suit, a Delaware jury unanimously determined that we did not infringe Intels networking patent and digital video patent at issue. Additionally, the jury unanimously determined that Intels networking patent was invalid. In March 2003 the court denied Intels post-trial motions and upheld the jurys verdict of noninfringement and invalidity in respect to Intels networking patent and noninfringement in respect to one claim of the digital video patent. The court granted a new trial on the other asserted claim of the digital video patent and our licensing defense. The court has not yet set a date to retry these claims or to try claims relating to Intels remaining three patents or our counterclaims against Intel.
In January 2002 Intel moved to amend its patent complaint against us in the Delaware action to assert that we infringe four additional Intel patents relating to video compression and direct memory access. We opposed Intels motion and filed a complaint against Intel for declaratory judgment in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California asserting that the four additional patents are not infringed. In August 2002 the Delaware court denied Intels motion to amend its complaint.
In November 2001 we filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas against Intel asserting that Intel (i) infringes two of our patents relating to graphics and memory access, (ii) induces the infringement of such patents, and (iii) contributorily infringes such patents. The complaint sought a preliminary and permanent injunction against Intel as well as the recovery of monetary damages, including treble damages for willful infringement. Intel denied our allegations of infringement and asserted related defenses and counterclaims in its January 2002 answer to the complaint. Intel also filed a motion to transfer the case to the Northern District of California, which the court denied. In July 2002 the court granted Intels motion to amend its pleadings by adding counterclaims of patent infringement against us relating to three Intel networking patents. The parties are currently conducting discovery in this action. A patent claims construction hearing in the case was held in December 2002. The court has not yet issued a claim construction order. Trial is currently scheduled to begin in July 2003.
In January 2001 Microtune, L.P., an affiliate of Microtune, Inc., filed a complaint against us in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas asserting that (i) our BCM3415 silicon tuner chip infringes a single Microtune patent relating to tuner technology, (ii) we induce the infringement of such patent, and (iii) we contributorily infringe such patent. The complaint sought a preliminary and permanent injunction against us as well as the recovery of monetary damages, including treble damages for willful infringement. In March 2001 we answered the complaint and filed counterclaims seeking a declaratory judgment that Microtunes patent is invalid, unenforceable and not infringed. Microtune subsequently amended its complaint to assert infringement by additional products, and we added the defenses that the patent in suit was procured by inequitable conduct and that Microtunes bringing and maintaining the suit is a patent misuse. Trial was conducted in March 2003 and a jury found that Microtunes patent is valid and infringed and that our infringement was willful. Judgment in this case is not yet final, and we plan to file post trial motions in April 2003 asking the court to reverse the jury verdict and/or order a new trial. Prior to trial, the parties stipulated to patent damages for an amount not to exceed approximately $1,200,000 for our sales of allegedly infringing products prior to January 2003. If the court
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In July 2002 we filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas against Microtune, Inc. and Microtune, L.P. asserting that Microtune (i) infringes one of our patents relating to tuner technology, (ii) induces the infringement of such patent, and (iii) contributorily infringes such patent. The complaint sought a preliminary and permanent injunction against Microtune as well as the recovery of monetary damages, including treble damages for willful infringement. In August 2002 Microtune filed an answer to the complaint denying our allegations and seeking a declaratory judgment that our patents in the suit are invalid, not infringed and unenforceable. The parties are currently conducting discovery in this action, and trial is scheduled to commence in January 2004.
In January 2003 we filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California against Microtune, Inc. asserting that Microtunes tuners, power amplifiers and Bluetooth products (i) infringe three of our patents relating to electrostatic discharge protection and wireless technologies, (ii) induce the infringement of such patents, and (iii) contributorily infringe such patents. The complaint sought a preliminary and permanent injunction against Microtune as well as the recovery of monetary damages, including treble damages for willful infringement. In February 2003 Microtune filed an answer to the complaint denying our allegations and seeking a declaratory judgment that our patents in the suit are invalid and not infringed. Discovery has not yet commenced, and the court has not yet set a trial date for the case.
In February 2003 Microtune, Inc. filed a complaint in the District Court of Williamson County, Texas, asserting that we have engaged in anti-competitive and monopolistic conduct as well as restraint of trade conduct in violation of the Texas Anti-Trust Act in connection with the sale of certain cable modem products. The complaint seeks the recovery of monetary damages, including treble damages for the alleged willful anti-competitive and monopolistic conduct. We have not yet answered the complaint.
In March 2003 we filed a complaint in the U.S. International Trade Commission (the ITC) asserting that Microtune, Inc. has engaged in unfair trade practices by importing tuners, power amplifiers and Bluetooth products that infringe two of our patents. Accordingly, the complaint seeks an exclusion order to bar the importation into the United States of those devices, as well as cable modems, set-top boxes, PCTV cards and Bluetooth headsets that incorporate Microtunes infringing chips. In addition, the complaint requests a cease and desist order to bar further sales of infringing products that have already been imported into the United States. We expect that the ITC investigation will commence in early April 2003 and that the ITC administrative hearing will occur before the end of this year.
In May 2002 National Semiconductor Corporation filed a complaint against us in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California asserting that we (i) infringe 11 National patents relating to cable modems, servers, and other home and office networking equipment, (ii) induce the infringement of such patents, and (iii) contributorily infringe such patents. The complaint seeks a permanent injunction against us as well as the recovery of monetary damages, including treble damages for willful infringement. In July 2002 (and as amended in February 2003) we answered the complaint by denying Nationals infringement allegations, and filed counterclaims asserting that National (i) infringes five of our paten